Volume 2, Number 12 · July 30, 1964
Bee-Keeper
By Christopher Ricks
The Scarperer
by Brendan Behan
Doubleday, 158 pp., $3.95
Hold Your Hour and Have Another
by Brendan Behan
Little, Brown, 192 pp., $4.75
The name Behan is said to mean bee-keeper, but the good thing about Brendan Behan was that he didn't keep them in his bonnet. Not that it would have been surprising if he had turned into a crank—after all, he was involved in a fatiguing series of balancing-acts, and it would have been easy to totter. An Irishman all right, but stingingly critical of blarney and Irishness, and using them in his books only to ridicule them or to outwit his persecutors. A New Statesman reader, but half-afraid of and half-contemptuous of intellectuals. A Roman Catholic, but scornful of the Church for its loving support of all the wrong political causes—and moreover a man who took the line, still dangerously bizarre in Ireland, of being as much against anti-Protestant vindictiveness as against anti-Catholic ditto. A leftist with a long memory but no rancor, who ringingly announced that his ambition was to be a rich Red. A card-carrying, indeed bomb-carrying, member of the Irish Republican Army, who spent the best years of his life (in more senses than just the schooldays one) behind bars, but who was later to find himself sentenced to death by the I.R.A. for removing his toes from the party line. (Fortunately the sentence was passed in his absence, so he was able to send a courteous note suggesting that it be executed in the same manner.) Such self-warring loyalties and likings would be enough to drive a man to drink. Not, apparently, that Behan needed much driving.
Review, 2133 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |